


Pure of Heart

by MissILikeTooManyFandoms



Series: Twisted [2]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Dark fic, F/F, Major Character Undeath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4417184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissILikeTooManyFandoms/pseuds/MissILikeTooManyFandoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The final battle is upon them. What is the cost of victory?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Grace's creepy bloody Carmilla monster art that coincided with the murder tweets. Set as the "finale." Hollstein kind of together/kind of not.

“Laura, watch out!” Danny’s warning barely came in time, but allowed Laura to duck and avoid the lethal kick aimed at her head. She whirled and swept her attacker off of his feet, giving her time to glance in her friend’s direction, but Danny was swarmed herself, forced to use her bow and arrow at short range. From across the quad, Laura watched helplessly as Danny’s arrows were depleted until she could only fend off the not-quite-human Corvae goons by turning her beautiful longbow into a bludgeon.

Laura had little time to worry however, as waves upon waves of off-kilter SWAT super soldiers continued to fall upon her. Her Krav Maga had yet to fail her but her own muscles were beginning to betray her. They had been fighting nonstop for an hour and she knew if she could ask LaFontiane, they would praise the nearly magical substance that was adrenaline but even the body’s natural response to emergencies had a limit. Laura could feel that she was rapidly approaching hers. Her reactions had already become sluggish. More and more blows penetrated her defense and though her small body had been honed to give and receive pain, it could not withstand the inhuman strength and speed that continued to beat and press upon her frame.

Hairline fractures spider webbed their away within her forearms. She could not yet feel that the bones were broken, but with every slight give of her virtually flawless blocks and punches, she knew that something was wrong. Her splintering bones failed to keep a sidekick at bay, even the glancing blow sent a shockwave that rattled her entire skeleton. She even heard the rib crack. Before the pain could set in, she managed to demolish the kicker’s knee. The Corvae thugs were human at least in form, no more difficult to break and kill. They just had to avoid their blows long enough to take them down.

A shriek echoed behind Laura as she danced away in an effort to recover for just the slightest of moments. Despite the risk, she glanced back. Ten meters away, Perry stood shielding a broken body. The flash of red against the cobblestone differentiated LaFontaine from the nearly identical black clad forms that littered the ground and their Greek and alchemical victims.  Laura had no time to grieve or work together if they were dead or not or even to think. By the time she had whirled around, a fist was connecting with her face. Only an instinctual reflex improved by over a decade of martial arts spared her life from the blow that would have surely broken her neck from the force alone. With a last reserve of strength, she used her opponent’s momentum against him, sending him hurtling into the ground behind her with a sickening crunch.

As she glanced around, she nearly laughed. This was her Battle of Hogwarts and she was no Harry Potter. Hell, she was not even Molly Weasley. She had not killed any lieutenant or any sort of leader. They were being overran by mere minions. Nearby, Mattie was locked in combat with Vordenberg and she was barely holding her own. She had read _Deathly Hallows_ more times than she could count. There were lines imprinted on her soul.

None helped her now. She had always thought of herself as the Third Brother, as Hermione, the one who would choose the Cloak but as she dodged yet another deadly attack, she wished for the Elder Wand. They were at the eleventh hour and the snake was not dead. They were out of time and there was no coming back from the forest. The story had gone wrong somewhere in the past three hours, beginning when they had marched on the wrong castle. They went after Snape when Voldemort had been among them the entire time.

A Corvae soldier advanced upon Laura and they traded blows for what felt like hours. They broke bones and tore muscles in turns as if they were playing some sort of twisted chess match instead of fighting to the death. After surviving thousands of blocks and punches, Laura’s wrist finally collapsed, unable to even hold her first up, giving way to the large, scarred fist tearing its way through her defense. It broke skin and bone. A peculiar sensation overwhelmed Laura, as if her heart was being squeezed.

The fist tightened and pulled and in the briefest flicker before darkness, in the moment that even her brain had not caught up to the fact that she was already dead, Laura thought that maybe she would not have minded the Resurrection Stone either.

 

She was already too late. She had been sidetracked by nearly an hour, wrapped up in finding the answer that had been staring her in the face. She should have joined them in their march upon Mattie. Foolishly, she had remained holed up in the apartment, too focused on her own rage and hurt to see the finale rearing its head. It had always been about that damn fish.

Mattie was losing to the Baron and she knew that she stood little chance, but when she saw Laura’s back buckle and the sickening grin on the Corvae goon’s face, she did not think of all that could and would go wrong, nor of her own weakness and blame. She acted.

Before the minion could remove his hand from Laura’s ribcage and her heart with it, his wrist having not even had the time to tremble between the time it brushed slick, hot flesh and Carmilla’s appearance, the vampire had sunk her teeth into Laura’s throat, drawing deep swallows of blood. She kicked the minion away with ease, keeping Laura’s heart and the now bodiless hand in place, while slitting her own wrist. With just a few drops of her blood over Laura’s mouth, the gaping wound in the center of Laura’s chest began to shrink and seal itself, knocking the hand free as her heart returned to its once protected place.

When Laura opened her eyes, eyes now black and blown wide, she threw Carmilla off, diving first for the man that had killed her. In the same moment that she was grateful that the transformation had worked, Carmilla regretted it and she tasted acid on her tongue.

 

“Kitty cat, that was genius!”

“Shut up, Mattie.”

“How on earth did you think of it? Or better yet, why didn’t I think of it first?” Broken, muffled voices invaded her senses. Sound was the first to return, followed by touch. A heavy weight rested up on her, making her squirm and thrash as she attempted to dislodge it. Third was sight. When Laura opened her eyes, she found Carmilla pinning her to the ground. The vampire was covered in blood, her hair matted with it. Deep gouges marred her face, shoulders, and chest. They healed slowly before her eyes.

“Laura? Can you hear me?” She heard her voice clearer than she ever had but she could only nod. Smell returned next. She was also covered in blood and for some reason that she could not place, she just knew that Carmilla was covered in her own blood and not anyone else’s. She could smell the difference. “Laura, you need to calm down.” She did not know that she was thrashing. Her mouth opened as the realization that she had caused the damage to the vampire above her crashed over her and warm, thick liquid poured from her mouth. Taste was last.

All she could taste was blood and she screamed.

As a chorus of “Laura!” rang out around her, she noticed that she and Carmilla were ringed by people, but there was quite some distance between where she and Carmilla lay intertwined and where her friends began. Danny held up a heavily bruised, practically purple but grinning Kirsch with Perry and Mattie to her left, LaFontaine between them on a pair of makeshift crutches with J.P. beside them. She would later realize that they were what was left of Danny’s bow. In the silence that followed her name, she found her voice.

“What did you do to me?”

“I…” The normally quick-witted vampire went silent, her eyes wide and pleading as her jaw trembled.

“She did what she had to, Laura.” Danny hazarded a minute step forward. “She…she had to change you.” The words clearly pained her to speak but there was no bitterness in her tone nor any look thrown Carmilla’s way.

“You were dead, darling, and Carmilla did what had to be done to save you and the rest of us. And all of campus, if not several neighboring countries.” Mattie actually smiled, her eyes bright. She seemed absolutely giddy.

“What Miss Belmonde means, is that Carmilla changing you saved us all. All was lost. There was no other way.”

“You should have let me die! How many people did I kill, Carm? How many?” Laura’s voice drowned out Perry’s, an undercurrent of power laced with it, not unlike that of Mattie’s banshee scream. Carmilla shook, still on top of her, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs.

“All of them, Laura. You killed everyone. The Corvae. What was left of the students you had brought with you. The Baron. Everyone.” She could not meet Laura’s eyes.

“And why didn’t you? Or Mattie? Why me? You…you made me kill them all! You didn’t give me a choice!”

“She unleashed you, you idiot child.” Mattie’s voice cut through the hysteria leaking into Laura’s voice. “A newborn vampire is uncontrollable. The First Thirst cannot be stopped. You would have killed the rest of us if it were not for Carmilla. Only you, a newly created vampire could have wrought the needed destruction.” Laura thrashed again beneath Carmilla, aching to tear out Mattie’s throat to just _do something_ about what she was hearing, about what had been done. She fought and scratched and bit at Carmilla, but she did not move. The others cringed and looked away, all fighting back tears save for Mattie. Danny stepped even closer, as if to help Carmilla.

“They wanted your heart, Laura.” Everyone stilled as Carmilla spoke once more, her voice broken and hoarse.

“What?” Laura stopped fighting, eyes wide and brow furrowed in confusion, Carmilla’s blood still dripping from her lips.

“’A heart of purest flesh and being, taken and still beating, will release the beast beneath and all will quake and quiver as light becomes light and darkness is extinguished.’” J.P. spoke up, edging around a bit to be better heard. “I had missed this document but Miss Karnstein found it in the Sumerian tome, written in a hidden passage that required vampiric blood to read. The Corvae and the Baron did indeed require your heart, Laura. They intended to raise the Angler Fish.” J.P. offered a slight, apologetic smile before being pulled back by LaFontaine who spoke next.

“What Carmilla did was twofold-“

“I tainted your heart.” Carmilla finally looked up, eyes empty. “They needed a pure heart and there were none purer than yours, cupcake. One drop of my blood and it was useless. I brought you back to life and ruined your heart in the process.”

“You…I….” Laura groped for words, no longer fighting Carmilla’s form upon hers while she combatted the conflict raging inside her.

“You were wrong, Laura. The story isn’t that you fall in love with a monster and make the monster better. You fall in love with a monster, Laura, and the monster makes you one too.”


	2. Hero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another idea that just kept bugging me. Might continue this further. I dunno.

“Where’s Carmilla? Sleeping it off somewhere?” Laura dropped down on to the chaise, a permanent scowl set into her features. Her friends exchanged worried, awkward glances before settling down themselves, keeping obvious distance between themselves and their friend. Maroon eyes scanned the room. She did not fail to notice the clear circle of danger that had been marked about her. “What? I’m not even thirsty. I’m not going to bite anyone.” She paused, a bitter, sour mass forming in her throat as her voice was forced to a cracked whisper. “I’m not a monster.”

“We’re not…afraid, Laura. Just a bit cautious.” Danny offered a weak smile but the gesture meant little from across the room.

“Did…Did I really try and…kill you all?” Her shoulders dropped as she watched her friends look between each other.

“I mean, it’s kind of cool in hindsight. You’re pretty badass, frosh.” LaFontaine fidgeted, bowing a bit beneath the intensity of Laura’s gaze. “But yeah. You did. If it weren’t for Carmilla…” They opened their mouth as if to backpedal as they took in the enraged expression on Laura’s face but they were overwhelmed in the face of the vampire’s fury.

“If it weren’t for Carmilla none of this would have happened! I wouldn’t have tried to kill anyone if it wasn’t for her! She was just cleaning up her own mess!” Before she knew it, she was on her feet, eyes wide and chest shaking with no longer needed breath. Pinpricks of pain to her lips told her that her fangs were extended, long and sharp and aching for the blood that surrounded her. As her friends all backed away, a fresh wave of frustration rolled over her but it was dulled by a twin rush of icy terror.

“Laura, I know you’re angry, but…he had your heart in his hand. It’s a miracle Carmilla was there. You…you were already dead. She had to. To save you, to save all of us.” Danny flinched as Laura advanced.

“No! She didn’t _have_ to. There’s always another way! Always! She doesn’t even bother to show up for the rally and then she takes my life away? I had the right to choose, Danny. I never would have picked this. Never.” Laura stepped closer, eyes flashing. Danny’s lips moved but even her sensitive hearing could not make out the sounds. “What was that?”

“She was going for the sword.”

“What?” While Laura advanced on Danny, forcing Danny into the wall, Kirsch fled to the opposite side of the room with LaFontaine, their eyes flickering to the stairs now barred from them.

“That’s why she wasn’t at the rally. She was going for the sword. That’s why she was able to save you. She was in the crater when the battle began.”

“And why would she tell you and not me?” Though her tone had not wavered, some of the fire had left Laura’s eyes.

“Because she couldn’t.” The look that crossed Laura’s face made Danny want to close her eyes, as if her hurt was too private for her to witness.

“Why…why even go for the sword?”

“I don’t know. I think she wanted to threaten Mattie with it if she needed to. And she had figured out the Baron.” Danny finally eased herself from the wall as Laura slowly retreated, falling heavily back onto the chaise. “She really did do everything she could, Laura. She followed you around and steered you towards the Corvae.”

“The students were just in the way.”

“And she threw them out of the way when she could but it was hard enough just keeping you focused on one person at a time. You were all over the place.”

“She threw herself in front of you when you rounded on us. You kept going for LaF and-“

“You…you kept breaking her bones but she wouldn’t stop. She never let you touch us. We hadn’t even figured out what she’d done until then. It all happened so fast.”

“Most of the students got away, Laura, they really did. Carmilla was screaming herself hoarse at them.”

“I mean, most of them were pretty terrified anyway. Seeing you running at them drenched in blood.”

“She tackled you as soon as you took out the Baron. You guys wrestled for like twenty minutes.”

“And then you woke up.”

Laura kept shaking her head, her lips moving rapidly as she mumbled but no words could be heard. Her fists clenched and unclenched at her sides, fingers trembling and shaking and making their way up to her face. She ached to cover her ears but the damage was already done, the chorus of voices had already stopped. In a flash, before her friends could even comprehend that there was movement, Laura turned and yanked some priceless object from the bookshelf and hurled it past Danny and into the sitting room where it shattered against the far wall with painful sharpness. The pieces dropped almost slowly, keeping the almost unearthly racket alive for several seconds longer. As her friends edged even farther away, wearing matching horrified expressions, their eyes bright with pity, Laura drew into herself, pulling her legs tight to her chest.

“This wasn’t how this was supposed to end. We were supposed to win and no more students were going to die and I’d come back and tell Carmilla she was wrong.” She was whispering but her words carried easily in the silent room. “Harry defeats Voldemort. Frodo destroys the ring. The Doctor outsmarts the Daleks. Good triumphs over evil. That’s how the story goes. The story isn’t get murdered and turned into a vampire? And kill everyone. That’s an awful story. It’s a tragedy. I…I don’t understand…”

“We did win, Laura.”

“No Danny we didn’t! This isn’t winning. I’m not _human_ anymore. Carmilla killed me!” She again failed to notice that she had moved and now stood toe to toe with her friend once again. Danny wrestled with words, her tight jaw and flickering eyes gave the conflict away but Perry flew in before she could speak. Laura had not even noted that Perry had been absent the entire time. Perry ignored the obvious showdown taking place, rushing over to whisper to LaFontaine. Laura heard anyway.

“Carmilla isn’t responding. I tried giving her blood, but-“ Before anyone could think to stop her, Laura was up the stairs, her feet barely even touching the wood. She nearly collapsed in the doorframe as she finally took in Carmilla’s appearance. Nothing was right. Her clothes were soaked in blood, sticking tight to her skin. Her limbs were bent and splayed at impossible angles. She could see the evidence of Perry’s attempts at resuscitation, fresh blood dribbling down her mouth, but as Laura forced herself closer, she could tell that some of the blood dripping from her lips were her own, from some internal injury. The cup of blood remained next to her head but Laura felt no urge to grab it, not for herself, not to fight Carmilla’s death yet again.

She expected tears but not even her body shook in weak semblances of sobs. There was no tightness around her now sluggish heart. There was only ice. When she was human, grief had felt like fire, everywhere and consuming, an irresistible heat, too powerful for her small frame but now she felt only the cold, as if ice water had been poured down her throat and injected into her veins. She wondered if this was even grief. Was she even sad? She waited a few moments, expecting her friends to burst in after her at any moment, but they never came and so she turned to leave.

A gurgle stopped her in her tracks. She whirled around but there was no obvious change in Carmilla. With a sigh and a tightened fist, she turned once again to depart, to leave part of herself behind, but a weak, bloody hand stopped her, barely pulling hard enough on her arm to be even felt.

“Hey.” The word was strangled and broken, punctuated by blood pouring from a half smirk.

“You asshole. I thought you were dead.” She did not pull away and she hated the way heat arced up from where they were connected. She hated that some void within her was rapidly filling as the ice retreated. Carmilla just laughed and laughed, the sound grotesque and sickening around the blood.

“I _am_ dead, sweetheart and so are you.”

“How could you do this to me? I never wanted this. I…I didn’t want eternity with you. Not even when things weren’t…messed up!” Laura fell into the chair at the broken vampire’s bedside, attempting to miss the hurt flashing in Carmilla’s eyes.

“I didn’t want to do it but I couldn’t let them kill you.”

“So you killed me instead?” Laura eased her tone as she watched Carmilla writhe in pain. She had tried jerking up, an instinctual response at Laura’s riling but it cost her dearly.

“Can you maybe act for two seconds like you understand what it took for me to do that?”

“Oh what? Did it wear you out?” The words sounded cruel even to Laura’s ears but she could not take them back.

“I love you, Laura! What part of that do you not understand? And yeah, when ‘things weren’t messed up’ I never wanted this life for you except in my most selfish moments. And yeah, maybe I did change you because I didn’t want to let you go just yet but I did it for you, for your stupid quest to save everyone. It had to be you, Laura. No one could have done what you did.”

“Out of all the dead and dying out there it had to be me? That’s awfully convenient.”

“Not everyone takes to the change. Not everyone can be a vampire, can survive the trauma of being reawakened. Otherwise, vampires would have overrun the planet. That’s why we band together. There’s not many of us. It takes a certain kind of strength, a certain kind of soul to become one of the damned.”

“And you just knew that I would survive it?”

“No. I didn’t. I hoped. If it didn’t work, you’d be dead anyway, but I had to try. You wanted the campus safe. You wanted your friends safe. Making you a vampire was the only way to do it. We would have all been slaughtered and the anglerfish set free to devour the world. You saved more people than you killed, Laura. You saved the day. You’re the hero you wanted so damn badly. And you get to live to save as many days you’d like.”

Laura jumped up, slamming her hands on to the bed, barely taking note of how Carmilla flinched and groaned at being so violently jostled. Their eyes flashed angrily at each other.

“Do you want a thank you?”

“What I want, Laura, is to fall asleep and never wake up but I don’t have that luxury and no longer do you. So you can stay mad at me forever but it’ll always be us. You have no concept of what’s to come but in ten years or twenty years or sixty years when everything you’ve ever known is dead and buried, it’ll be me and you and Mattie and probably this damn hellhole. You don’t love me. That’s fine, but I’m all you’ll have and I want that to be enough for you because it’s more than enough for me.”

“This…this is so…messed up! You know that right?”

“The world’s messed up, creampuff, and you just saved it.” Carmilla sighed, falling back a bit against her bloody pillows while Laura whirled back around, beginning to pace at the end of the bed.

“This wasn’t how it was supposed to end, Carmilla! I never wanted to save Silas like this. Never like this.”

“Then did you want to save it? Did you really want to? Or were you clinging to some idiotic notion of right and wrong? What’s more important, Laura? That you saved more lives than you ended or that you had to compromise some fabricated moral code to do the job? Which is it? You thought I was some hero for poking a monster in the eye and yet you’re torn up over some collateral damage when you saved a whole continent?” Carmilla managed to sit back up enough to stare at Laura more evenly, an eyebrow arched. After a pregnant pause, she struggled to reach the cup nearby but with a huff, Laura returned to her side and held the cup to her lips.

“You suck.” When Carmilla was done, they smiled halfheartedly at each other.

“The world isn’t black and white, Laura, and right now, you’re as gray as it gets. That’s where creatures like us exist. Not dead or alive, not good or evil. Someplace in the middle.”

“I’m sorry for…doing this to you.” She settled gently at Carmilla’s side, a hesitant hand hovering near the top of her head, as if to stroke the bloody, matted locks.

“If it makes you feel any better, it wasn’t really you. You were all instinct, no conscious thought. Maybe that’ll help you sleep at night over this whole fiasco.” Carmilla inched a hand towards the one supporting Laura on the bed as she leaned, near where she sat, slowly covering it with her own.

“What’s next?” Before Carmilla could answer, their friends bumbled in, Perry leading the charge while Kirsch and Danny stumbled over each other and nearly knocked down LaFontaine. They fussed and fed the vampires and though she despised the attention, Carmilla was thankful for the distraction. She did not have an answer.


End file.
